“Made For Love,” by Mia Gidge

“Made for Love” is a song made for the hopeless romantic who doesn't get attention. This incredible song was written by our own Mia Gidge who is our secretary here at A Teen Perspective. She is 17 years old, finishing up her final year of high school, and is on her path to film school in post secondary. Other than songwriting, she likes to read, paint and sew.

Mia came to me with her song, “Made for Love”, and I instantly fell in love with it. We had a great chat as I asked her a couple questions about this song and her music. You can stream “Made for Love” by Mia Gidge on Spotify, Apple Music and on Youtube! To learn more about her song, continue reading below!

What inspired you to write this song?

“I actually wrote it when I was about 14 or 15 years old. This song is actually about two people! There was this particular person in my life that I really cared about, I had a little crush on them. I’m a pisces, if that accounts for anything, I’m just a very sensitive person; I fall very quickly. He was probably the first boy I had ever had a serious crush on. Since we were so young, the chances of leaving him and never talking to him again was a really good possibility after leaving for high school, which was an idea that really hurt me. The first verse is about July 1st, Canada Day, when my friends and I all went to this park to watch the fireworks and something about him that night was just different. He was a very flakey guy, but this night in particular he was very kind to me, and so I had no idea how he felt about me but I knew that I didn't want to let it go. The chorus is actually about someone else. I wrote a letter to get all of my feelings out about him and so that's where the chorus “maybe I'm not made for love” came from.”

Since you wrote this when you were younger, how have you grown as a person since writing this song?

“I’ve been trying to expand the way that I write. I understand that not everyone wants to hear about love songs and I don't want it to be the only thing that my creativity is being used for. I want to explore different areas of expressing my creativity. At the time, I was very naive about love. I was so used to rejection: I got rejected by so many people and I thought it had so much to do with me. I realize now that people come into your life for different reasons. It's not necessarily because they’re meant to be there forever.”

“I'm such a hopeless romantic; I'm the person who thinks, “this person is going to be the one!”. Now I think I've grown to a space of maturity where I can have feelings towards someone, but I can differentiate between platonic and romantic love. My self love has grown so much, so for future relationships I've realized that it's not enough for them to be good people, they also have to be good to me. I’m at a point right now where I feel so free not being tied up in any crush or relationship because I'm learning so much more about myself, and I love that.”

Do you have a particular line or verse that's your favourite?

“There are definitely a lot of lyrics that I look back on now that make me want to hug my younger self and say, “it's going to be okay!”. I really like the lyrics “you kiss me on the cheek, I feel it in my knees” because it encapsulates how I feel about physical affection.”

“Although it's a bit serious, I really like the beginning of the chorus, “maybe I'm not made for love, maybe I just need someone”. I feel like that thought went through my mind so many times, and I know that others can relate, where I feel like I have so much love to give. A lot of times you think that you have the right people, so it has to be something wrong with you because the person you love could never be wrong, but in reality it has nothing to do with you or them. The reason why it doesn't work out is because it's just not the right person.”

Did you write and produce this all yourself? How was the writing and producing process?

“Yes so everything was done by me. I have this really cool friend Dominic who loves music and producing so there would be times where I'd send clips to him to get his feedback, but all of the actual work on the computer was done by me. I used Garageband, a microphone from the Wii game Rock Band, and my old guitar. All of the writing was done by me. The lyrics were written so long ago, yet I would sing them all the time around my room. Then I came out with my first song “Until the Lights Go Off”. Those two songs were probably the ones I sang the most, so they were the first ones to come to mind when I decided I wanted to release some songs for fun.”

“Things do change when you're writing. When I first wrote this song I wrote it for the piano, it was very slow and a lot more melancholic. Even though I go to school for a performing arts program, my knowledge on music theory is very minimal so when producing this I used a lot of software instruments and basic chords. I honestly was just typing into the keyboard, finding things I liked and putting it in. I used to put myself down because there were so many people making amazing songs, but I had to realize that they had better equipment, other producers, more musical knowledge and different opportunities. At the end of the day, it was all just for fun but the process itself took forever. The mic was very finicky, you can still hear some clicks in the song. The recording process for the vocals took me a long time. I was stuck on it for so long because I couldn't find the perfect way to write it. It sucks when you're writing and producing a song and you start hating it half way through. Luckily I was doing it during quarantine so I didn't have anything else to do so I kept working on it. I'm really glad that I persevered, and my friends love listening to it so that's all I could ask for.”

Do you have any particular feelings or thoughts that you hope other people have when listening to this song?

“I hope that people want to listen to my song while on a late night drive with their friends. Some people text me and tell me that they listen to my song while they're driving, and that is the absolute biggest compliment. The feedback I've received warms my heart to the core. People I didn't think would like my music have actually supported me so much. I hope people can reminisce and just drive around at 1am with the windows rolled down listening to my song. It breaks my heart to know that someone else could relate to how I was feeling, but I'm glad that it can be relatable and give people those fuzzy sad feelings. I want people to listen to this and think “wow I’ve been heard, someone understands me."

Do you have any advice for people reading this who want to make their own music?

“Literally anyone can pursue music; if I can do it, you can do it. If you're a very emotional person you have to have an outlet for that. I love this one quote that says, “if emotional people don't have an outlet to create, then they go insane”. I relate to that so much, you can't keep all those emotions inside. Even if you're not a songwriter, go for it! Try it out! What's the worst that could happen? You don't even need to have experience with music, you just need to have an imagination and inspiration. It doesn't even need to be emotional, it can be something funny that happened at a grocery store; it can literally be anything you want it to be as long as you have the heart to do it. Garageband is free, and you can use old or cheaper instruments; just put your heart out there. Technology these days makes it so easy to create something in a matter of minutes even if you don't have any experience whatsoever ! Some of my favourite lyrics I've written are the most terrifyingly personal feelings. But that’s what makes them great! You never know who you could inspire. Ella Hartley (who is also an amazing member of A Teen Perspective) showed me how to put my songs online and helped me out, she inspired me and If she wasn't in my life I probably would have never released a song. Your music could help someone out there. If you create anything, send it to me and I’ll listen to it! Love yourself enough to know that you can do anything you put your mind to; the possibilities are endless.”

Are you going to keep making more music? Maybe something is already in the works?

“Absolutely, if people wanna listen to it then i'll make more! I've been taking a bit of a hiatus. I'm a bit of a pessimist and get down in the dumps. There are certain things that aren't available to me and I tend to compare my music to others a lot. However I'm trying to get some more equipment, maybe some better software. I'm taking a break from releasing because I want to experiment and expand my genre. I don't necessarily have a specific genre right now. Obviously it's indie because I'm releasing it independently, but i guess it's like pop and dream pop. I love the sound of synths so I think that contributes to the dream pop sound because that's such a vital piece for that genre. I also love shoegaze music, which is where they use a lot of guitar pedals; I love that slow reverb-chorus sounding kind of music. However I also really like folk music and I write most of my songs on guitar now so I love that vibe. There's also the whole electronic type of music that I haven't even grazed the surface on so I really want to make good music that I enjoy and have experimented with before I release it. I wanna mature a little more as well, I realize that I wanna take more time to create music that I feel proud of. I wanna work on myself and expand on my skills. Songwriting is very intuitive for me so it just comes to me. I've been writing a bunch recently because I’ve been inspired, so hopefully soon there will be some music that I want to release.”

My interview with Mia was so much fun and I had the best time chatting with her. She is such a kind person and she really shows that through her music. She is dedicated and puts in so much effort into her work and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next!